So for about a year and a half now I thought my turntable sounded really good. My phono stage $ is not on par with my cartridge $$$, but it was pleasing so I spent elsewhere to upgrade and chalked up any lacking in the system to that. My turntable is the Schiit Sol which is quite good sounding, has enough adjustments to make your head spin, and definitely responds to some tweaks to make the user experience even better. When I first set up the table, I spent a good 3 hours making sure everything was right. Cartridge was aligned, VTA was good, bought a little digital scale for tracking force, etc. As I kept tweaking and getting better sound I focused on the phono stage being my bottleneck. On a whim, I decided to get a usb microscope to make sure my VTA was on point. From the photos I took during my setup before, it was damn near on at the recommended 20° but I wanted to make sure. When I hooked up the microscope, I found I was pretty damn close at 18.2°. Not bad for eyeballing with a phone camera. In reality, the joke was on me. As I dropped the needle after adjusting the vta to the correct 20°, I realized the MASSIVE error of my ways. Everything I thought was a flaw in my system was a flaw in my turntable setup. The bass muddyness cleared up, detail and separation were more complete, the depth of soundstage so much more palpable. It's quite embarrassing and somewhat comical at how using a $20 tool used for 10 minutes could benefit my stereo so much to bring out the music properly. As I'm typing this, I'm just giggling to myself how incredible this sounds. I will never again make the mistake of a "looks good enough" setup. Now, back to the music!
